Daddy's Roomate

Willhoite, Michael. Daddy’s Roommate. Los Angeles: Alyson Publications, 1990.

Daddy’s Roommate tells the story of a young boy whose parents recently divorced, and the father acquires a new roommate; Frank. The boy’s father and Frank express their relationship through several common actions. The two eat together, sleep together, clean together, and even argue with one another. Frank also develops a relationship with the young boy as he reads stories to him, helps catch bugs for show and tell, and also chases away his nightmares. The young boys mothers reveals that Daddy and Frank are gay, describing this unfamiliar word as a different type of love. Despite this new and unusual relationship, the young boy realizes that both he and his Daddy are happy because love is the best kind of happiness.

Daddy’s Roommate is a book in which highlights the normalcy of homosexual couples. Stereotypes play a major role in our viewpoint of certain situations and the author, Willhoite, does an excellent job of counteracting these falsehoods. Daddy’s Roommate is an easy book to read in that the pages are covered almost entirely with illustrations leaving minimal room for text. This is an important decision by the author because his illustrations have to hold the weight by portraying what is being said in just a couple words.

The main idea of this story is to display how a couple of two men, who have a child, can be the same as any other family. By the authors’ examples of common daily activities done by the couple and the young boy, allows the reader to feel connected to the story and its characters even if they don’t have a family similar to the one being represented. Additionally, the involvement of the young boys’ mother is beneficial to the story. She had a positive and encouraging outlook on the young boys’ father’s relationship.

I also appreciated that this story began with a mother and father getting divorced. The topic of divorce, alone, is usually difficult. It is typically depicted, again by society, with anger, hurt, and constant arguing. However, Willhoite gives the reader an opportunity to see a divorce occur in which the parents and the child are happy and supportive of one another.